Kill Switch by William Hertling

Author:William Hertling [Hertling, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction
ISBN: 1942097069
Amazon: B07JLL5CP9
Goodreads: 42414041
Publisher: Liquididea Press
Published: 2018-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Robin sat in front of the cameras, waiting for them to come alive. The Faraday curtains rustled softly, the ventilation system causing them to move in the air current. She needed to get back before she was missed.

The screen flickered, and Enso appeared, alone.

Robin was slightly let down, expecting at least to see someone else from the intelligence community. Not every briefing could involve the Deputy Director, but she figured that Tapestry was at the top of the government’s list right now.

“Good afternoon, Robin.”

“Enso.”

“I saw your last report. You’re convinced they’re going to evade the FISA court order.”

“Yes, Sir. It’s obvious that T2’s entire purpose is to create a technological solution that makes it impossible for Tapestry to comply with the FISA court order.”

“T2?”

“The internal slang for Tapestry 2.0. The official project name is Tacenda, a word which means things not to be discussed, but I recommend not using the term in any documentation. My guess is that they’re using Trojan horse code names, same as us. It’s a rarely used word. Assuming they’ve compromised us, they could mine our database and know we’re monitoring them.”

“There’s no way they could get inside our systems. China is attacking us 24/7, and in the last six years they’ve penetrated to this level exactly zero times.”

Robin shrugged. There was no way to prove how she felt.

“You have specs on T2?”

“Only what I could glean from discussions. There’s nothing written down anywhere I can find, no central repository.”

“But you’re convinced that it’s more than just the…” Enso glanced down to review his notes. “Client-side containers?”

“Definitely. At a minimum the work they’re doing involves onion routing, IPFS and bit torrent, distributed ledgers, and the containers we talked about. Exactly how all that fits together isn’t obvious, but the pressure to develop this before the deadline is very high, and yet they’re intentionally only involving a select few employees.”

“What if we bring Angelina Benenati in for questioning?”

Robin laughed. “You’d have more luck squeezing single malt from a stone.”

“If we have to question her, what approach should we take?”

“She’s too aware of the government as a threat. We’re not going to trick her. There’s nothing she cares about more than the company and what it’s doing. There’s no leverage to trump that.”

“What about the husband? She seems pretty attached to him. If we threatened to harm him?”

Robin tried to imagine what would happen. She shivered at the thought of Angie lashing out.

“We know what she’s capable of,” Robin said, choosing her words carefully. “If you corner her, there’s going to be collateral damage.”

Enso gave a puzzled grin and leaned toward the camera. “Are you scared of her?”

“She has a certain…intensity that is alarming. Sir, we should really focus on Igloo. She’s worked with Angie all along, and she’s part of T2. She doesn’t have all the details, but she has enough to paint an accurate picture of what’s going on. With the right leverage, we could get a backdoor into the system through her.”

“Legal says we can get her on domestic assault with the videos of her and her girlfriend,” Enso said.

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